A Knock At the Window
by yellowis4happy
Summary: There are truths, and then there are TRUTHS.   Implied Slightly/Peter.


**Author's Note: **A small, very old idea that is somewhat unrefined and could probably use some editing, but has been teetering on the brink of completion for so long that I figured I better give it a go at finishing.

Reviews are welcome, so let's here them.

* * *

**A Knock At the Window**

A small, fleeting pressure, like the gentle kiss of a butterfly, is all that it takes to wake him these days. One careless brush of a passing finger, or the unfortunate landing of a leaf on an autumn day that truly seals its death, and his eyes shoot open, startled, apprehensive, and searching.

Just the slightest pressure.

Slightly remembers the first time he woke to such a pressure.

_{A whisper of flesh on flesh, and then a small, darting globe of light, both illuminating and shadowing the brilliant green eyes hovering over his face. A question, a command, the feeling of warm callused __fingers on his urging him into chill night air.}_

More often then once, Slightly has wondered how many of the others Peter has brought to the island in this way. But they are always eager to think well of Peter's side of things; when a lie has been told enough times for even the liar to be convinced of it, then the listeners are that much more inclined to ignore any holes in its weave.

It has always bothered Slightly that no one questioned Peter in his storytelling. It didn't take much to see that Peter's "truth" was always what he wanted it to be. And it is then, when he is thinking about this, that he again wishes he did not possess a better memory than the other boys, and, more importantly, the boy who refused to grow up.

_{Even now, Slightly thinks he had never before met anyone so playfully seductive. __Peter would move closer, and than dance away, all the while watching him to judge his reaction, and it was then that Slightly knew he could never allow anything so beautiful out of his sight.}_

Slightly's eyes are open and staring out the open dark window at the foot of his bed.

It was the curtain that woke him this night. He closes his eyes again and feels the breeze on his face, and, not for the last time, wishes he can forget.

Tomorrow, it will happen again.

In a way, he supposed, meeting Wendy was better than anything else that could have happened to him. He had been in the process of being consumed by that green-eyed poison, by that faulty memory, by his thoughts that were too like a grown-ups to be his, that no one else seemed to have, that he could not share with anyone for fear of being cast out and shamed.

His hands feel rough against the smooth metal of the window's handles that almost feels like cold silk under his touch, and he hurriedly draws the window shut, although his arms feel like they are pushing against a current of water in a losing battle. His fingertips sting slightly from the chill when they withdraw from it.

Slightly slides back into the bed that he is not quite grateful for, and draws the covers over his head, as if in an effort to darken the space between his eyelids and his eyes and shut out the memories of the first glimpse of that mischievous smile and that globe of light.

.

.

.

Wendy, having awakened at the gentle click of the window's latch, tip-toes past Slightly's footboard carefully. She looks endearingly down at her adopted younger brother, already lost in a troubled sleep, before reaching across delicately and pulling the window open again. The twinkle of a lost dream rises in her eye as she gazes out into the chilled starlight before she turns, with emotion somewhat akin to that of a lost child burying itself in her heart, and wanders on numb toes across the bare floor back to her corner of the room, where she tucks herself into comfort thinking of a half forgotten fairyland that has, unknowingly, itself, forgotten her.

The shadow that she has almost seen lingers on the window sill a moment longer, as if musing over a partly realized thought, before melting back into the gray fog of London night that lies just outside the Darling's house. It hesitates at the very edge, and then slips away on a buoyant breath of breeze that almost sounds like a sigh.

There is always tomorrow.


End file.
